ABSTRACT
Ever since he had twice toured Egypt as a young man, Leopold had been enthralled both by the Nile, up which he had travelled as far as Wadi Haifa, and by the splendours of ancient Egypt. How could the upper Nile not have tempted him? When, therefore, in the autumn of 1886, a very odd situation arose in Egypt's Equatoria Province, Leopold was quick to grasp the opportunity that it seemed to present to extend his frontiers in that direction. The situation arose from the fact that, when Charles Gordon had been Governor-General of the Sudan in the late 1870s, he had appointed as Governor of Equatoria a man of mysterious origins who went by the name of Emin Bey, later to be Emin Pasha. In December 1886 an Emin Pasha Relief Committee was formed and set about trying to mount a rescue expedition.
